Michelle Yeoh: All Her Best Post-Oscar Movies

It also catapulted Michelle Yeoh into the international spotlight as the actor won the coveted Best Actress award, making her the first Asian Best Actress ever.

In her speech, Yeoh said, “To all the little boys and girls who look like me tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibility.

“And ladies, don’t let anyone tell you that you’ve ever passed your prime.”

For Yeoh, who is previously best known for starring in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Crazy Rich Asians, the recognition was extremely welcome. The Malaysian actress has been working for four decades, and although she starred in some brilliant films, she had not become a household name.

In January, she won the Best Actress award at the Golden Globes and spoke about her struggles in the industry during her acceptance speech.

“It’s been an amazing journey, an incredible struggle to be here today. But I think it was worth it. I remember when I first came to Hollywood – it was a dream come true until I came here because… look at that face. I came here and was told you were a minority and I thought that wasn’t possible,” she said. “Then the best gift came, all everywhere at once…”

In Everything Everywhere All At Once, Yeoh plays Evelyn, an overworked laundromat owner busy filing her tax returns. Her husband is trying to divorce her, her demanding father is visiting, and her daughter Joy is hoping her mother will accept her non-Chinese friend – it seems like there’s a lot going on.

But things really start when her husband becomes possessed by an alternate version of himself. He delivers the message that the universe is being threatened by an alternate version of her daughter, so Evelyn must accept the challenge and destroy all of those spin-off versions of Joy. Stunning.

Whether you’re a long-time fan of Yeoh and now excited about their success or just discovering them, here’s our pick of their best films.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

In 1997, Pierce Brosnan was still playing the MI6 agent, Bond Girls were still heavy-chested and short-lived, and Dench was still M. Tomorrow Never This is about a vengeful media mogul (Jonathan Pryce) who decides to stir up hatred between China and the western world to china don’t let it send in the country. Luckily, Bond called to try to keep World War at bay. Yeoh is Wai Lin, the highly skilled Chinese agent who works with Bond to set things right.

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000)

One of the greatest films of all time, Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, was nominated for ten Oscars in 2000 and won four. Set in 19th-century China, Yeoh plays the warrior Yu Shu Lien whose sword is stolen by a master thief. The story revolves in part around their attempts to retrieve it, but it quickly unravels as nothing – and nobody – is what they first seem. Ziyi Zhang plays Jen Yu, the daughter of a powerful governor.

Memories of a Geisha (2005)

Based on Arthur Golden’s 1997 novel of the same name, this beautiful Oscar-winning film reunited Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang on screen. Zhang plays Chiyo Sakamoto, a woman who is sold to a geisha house as a child, and Yeoh plays Mameha, one of the district’s most well-known geishas and Chiyo’s mentor. Over the years, Chiyo becomes a geisha of great importance in her own right. The high stakes story follows Chiyo’s rise to power while navigating the complicated social and political scenes of 1920’s Japan.

Sunshine (2007)

Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne and Mark Strong star alongside Yeoh in this sci-fi thriller directed by Danny Boyle and set in the year 2057. The sun is setting much, much earlier than expected, so a group of astronauts are sent on a perilous mission to try to revive it. The idea is very human: planet earth decides to drop a giant bomb on the sun to give it a jump start. But as always in space, things are extremely precarious, and almost immediately things start to go wrong. Although the film didn’t shine at the box office and wasn’t acclaimed by critics either, it makes the heart beat faster.

The Lady (2011)

In 2018, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi became a global outcast: Amnesty International called for her awards to be revoked as over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled persecution in Myanmar and her government stood idle and did little to stop the country’s ethnic cleansing country undertook. However, there was a long window of opportunity before that when the world was more than hopeful about Suu Kyi. Yeoh plays the complicated Burmese politician in The Lady. Beginning in 1947, with the assassination of Suu Kyi’s politician father, Aung San, the film follows Suu Kyi’s life as she is raised in England, falls in love but is recalled to Burma, a country ravaged by militarism.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

In 2018, Crazy Rich Asians was one of the biggest movies of the year, becoming the highest-grossing American rom-com of the past decade. Based on Kevin Kwan’s 2013 novel of the same name, the film starred Henry Golding as Nick, an extremely wealthy Singaporean who has been hiding his family’s immense wealth from his friend Rachel (Constance Wu), an economics professor. When she is invited to accompany him to a wedding in Singapore, she quickly realizes that Nick is not who she originally thought. Yeoh plays Nick’s mother, Eleanor, who doesn’t approve of Nick’s decision to date Rachel.